An Open Letter to Blizzard

Dear World of Warcraft Design Team:

I would like to thank you for providing over 4 years of quality entertainment. When World of Warcraft entered the market, it turned the genre on its head. Never before had there been such a vibrant, beautiful and, most importantly, accessible world to play in. While I initially scoffed at how "easy" the game was when compared to my current subscription-based game, I soon came around.

Allow me to tell you a story.

Early in 2005, I was thoroughly engrossed in the world of Vana'diel. I had been playing Final Fantasy XI for a couple years. When World of Warcraft came out, I was completely uninterested. However, something about your game buried itself in the back of my head. I kept going back and reading about it. I realized that the long, boring grind that EVERYTHING in Final Fantasy XI had become was no longer for me. There was a better way.

What led me to realize it was time for a switch?

When I was paying $15 a month for one game, and spending more time reading about ANOTHER game than playing the one I was paying for, I knew it was time for a change.

I was lucky enough to find a copy of your fine product on the shelves of my local game store and was soon a welcome resident of Azeroth. I spent the next four-plus years loving World of Warcraft. I brought friends to join me. I even started up this blog to write about my love of this game.

However, recently, things have been changing. I don't play any more because it's fun. I find myself playing just because it's what I do. If I don't play WoW tonight, what else would I do with my time? With each patch that comes along, I find myself less and less excited.

As my fellow blogger, Big Bear Butt stated in a recent post:

"Honestly, they do this, and even though a lot of the new stuff excites me, the way they make sweeping class changes with a sledgehammer, over and over and over, this ’change for the sake of change’ s***, just makes me want to log off, and not come back."

This really got me thinking. I greatly respect BBB, he was one of the ones who motivated me to start blogging in the first place. I realized that some part of me agrees with this sentiment. Now, back in the day, there were entire content patches dedicated to class changes. At the time, I thought this was awesome. What other company cares about its game so much that it dedicates valuable development time to improving existing gameplay elements?

However, another thought has come to mind. Why were Feral Druids, Protection and Retribution Paladins, Elemental Shamans and any number of other specs completely useless for the better part of two years?

Okay, okay. I'm no game developer. I have no idea how hard it is to balance a game of this scale. Fair enough. However, FOUR years after release, you're telling me you STILL don't have a handle on Paladin tanking?

Since the release of Burning Crusade, we have seen a dropoff in the number of major patches. Or have we? I don't remember massive changes in "minor patches" like we've seen in 2.3.2 or 3.1.3 back when we were receiving "major patches" every 2 months. You're trying to make it look like you're not overhauling the game every month or so while that's exactly what you're doing.

Of course, that's the Butterfly Effect. A small change to one skill or stat completely throws off the precarious balance you're trying to maintain between all the various classes and specs, both PVP and PVE. It's a daunting task, I'm sure. However, somewhere along the way, you stopped developing the game YOU wanted, and started developing the game the FORUMS wanted. I do not like this change in direction.

I don't raid, I don't seriously PVP. I don't care if a Demonologist is 0.3% higher in DPS than my Affliction. But, oh no, there are too many people out there who do.

When you start trying to make everyone happy, you end up making nobody happy.

What did I enjoy about this game? I loved building a character up from scratch.

I loved trying out a new combination of talents. However, now it's all but impossible to attempt anything other than a cookie cutter build.

I loved making gear decisions, figuring out which item would benefit me the most. Now, who cares? I'll outgrow these items in a couple hours.

I loved LEVELING. That has now become a complete joke. Who wants to bother with all this wonderfully designed content when there's EPICS waiting at the end of the road?

Well, I do.

And I accept that World of Warcraft has passed me by.

Do you know how I have come to accept this? Even though you're still getting my fifteen dollars, I have been spending more time researching an falling in love with another game than I have playing yours.

Sound familiar?

Now, I'm not one of those people who jumps ship any time something shinier comes across. I stayed true through Everquest 2, D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan and many other new games. However, this weekend, I participated in a Closed Beta event for Aion, and I completely fell in love with it.

I would like to once again thank you for endless hours of enjoyment. I truly believe that World of Warcraft is one of the most brilliant games ever conceived. Twelve million people can't be wrong. It's just that, taking many recent design decisions into account, I no longer find myself enjoying the game as much as I once did.

Your fan,
Samodean

Note: Fear not, dear reader. This does not mean I'm canceling my subscription... yet. This does not mean I've stopped blogging... yet. Even if I decide to switch focus, I'm enjoying blogging too much to completely abandon it.

Comcast Issues

Apparently, Blizzard and Comcast are not getting along this week.

What SEEMS to be the issue is that, after a server crash Monday night, most, if not all, of WoW-playing Comcast subscribers are having lag issues. Comcast users are having no issues with other games, and non-Comcast players are not experiencing additional lag. The only ones who do are in former Comcast territories still running off Comcast servers.

Normally, I have a latency of around 100 ms. This weekend, I was at a constant 300-400, with spikes of up to 1000.

Blizzard has a post on their Tech Support forum here.

Now, I'm not expert once these things leave the local level, but it appears that once the data hits the AT&T owned hardware on the route, things get hosed up. So, there are potentially THREE companies that need to get together to figure this one out. I seem to recall a similar issue this summer with Time Warner, but I'm not sure how that turned out.

Sam's Blizzcon thoughts

While I was not lucky, rich or motivated enough to trek cross-country for Blizzcon, I had to be happy with refreshing MMO Champion every 5 minutes trying to get the latest news.

So, I have a few thoughts on the announcements made this weekend.

First, the non-WoW announcements.

Diablo III's Wizard? Love it. Blizzard described the Wizard as a young, untrained mage not yet worthy of the title "Sorcerer." What does this mean for us players? Lots of explosions. The Video is a must-see.

Starcraft II brought the biggest bomb of the show, announcing that it would be split into 3 separate games, with each game's single-player campaign focusing on one of the three races. Some see this as Blizzard's way of milking more money out of us, but, honestly, I'm all for it. So as long as they're willing to distribute 3 full games' worth of content, I'm willing to purchase 3 full games. Think of it as Blizzard's usual "one game and one expansion" method, with a second expansion thrown in to complete the story.

World of Warcraft took up most of the show. Here's some highlights.
Dual-Spec System: I like this and hate it at the same time. I like the concept. Personally, I would love to be able to respec my Shaman to Restoration for an instance run, then back to Enhancement for leveling. If they can implement the item-rack feature to allow you to carry around a second set of armor, great. Binding hotkeys and Glyphs to each spec? Brilliant. My main issue with the system is that it's too flexible. Currently, as planned, you will be able to switch specs at any time outside of combat. This seems like a poor decision to me. It takes away all the individuality of the different specs, by allowing someone to constantly hop back and forth. In my opinion, they should make an NPC in major cities that will switch your spec. That way, players will actually have to choose which spec will be the most useful for what they want to do. Obviously, this system is still pretty far off, so I'll withhold final judgement until then.
Death Knight Talents: I would love to see this philosophy spread to other classes. Originally, Blood was the DPS tree, Frost was the tanking tree and Unholy was the PVP tree. Now, any spec will do for each purpose. The talent trees just dictate HOW you go about it. Blood is about pure damage and healing, Frost is about Crowd Control, while Unholy is about Diseases and Minions. Surely, there will be a "best" spec for each situation, but an Unholy Knight will be able to tank decently, and a Blood Knight will be effective in PVP.
Freezing Shot: This allows Hunters to CC without setting up traps ahead of time. This will allow Huntards to be useful, but I can't wait to see it in the hands of a good Hunter. I'm very much looking forward to the possibility of keeping multiple enemies trapped for extended periods of time.
Affliction Warlocks: Bliz acknowledges that the Affliction tree is a bit complicated, without a true focus, and I agree. While I am an Affliction 'Lock for life, I'm not crazy about the 3.0 tree.
Swimming Mounts: While it's nice to be able to cross rivers on my Dwarf without dismounting, when my Draenei never had a problem, I'm a bit disappointed. I would have preferred actual water mounts.
Tenacity Pets: Hunters with pets specced for tanking should be able to off-tank instances, but not main tank. Awesome.
DoTs: Being able to tag a mob when the DoT is applied, not when it ticks would be huge. Not implemented yet, but it's nice to know they're working on it.

Plenty more out there that I'm not going to comment on, but I would love to hear your input!